Mexico’s elections have brought back the PRI, an authoritarian party that ruled Mexico for seven decades. This possibility had worried many observers and politicians in the United States, and yet, surprisingly, it will make little difference for the U.S.-Mexico relationship. This is largely a tribute to how deeply interdependent the two countries are today, as well as the ways in which Mexican society has evolved over the past two decades.

The PRI has been known in the past for its anti-American rhetoric and distrust of the United States. However, circumstances over the past 20 years have completely changed the relationship between the two countries.

The party that ruled Mexico for decades with an autocratic grip appears to have vaulted back into power after 12 years in opposition, as voters troubled by a bloody drug war and economic malaise gave its presidential candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto, a comfortable victory on Sunday, according to exit polls and early returns.

If the victory is confirmed by more complete official results to be announced early Monday morning, it would be a stunning reversal of fortune for the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party.

What would it mean in practice to emphasize violence reduction in lieu of a counter-narcotics policy?…

First, the Mexican government could form pacts with organized crime to reduce violence in exchange for tacitly accepting drug trafficking. This was effective in Mexico in the 1970s and 1980s when the authoritarian PRI party and its Direccion Federal de Seguridad (equivalent to the FBI) managed and protected traffickers in exchange for bribes and low levels of violence…

Second, the Mexican government could target the most violent trafficking groups, as Eric Olson of the Woodrow Wilson Center has argued in a recent report. By targeting groups like Los Zetas that have expanded their criminal activities into kidnapping and extortion, the government could punish these groups in the hopes that cartels in Mexico would compete to be perceived as the least violent and thereby avoid federal attack…

Mexico’s ruling party faces heavy defeat at a presidential election on Sunday and already is preparing for life in the opposition, where it could help pass economic reforms that it was unable to push through in power.

Calderon took office in 2006 with his own ambitious plans to lure private investment to state oil giant Pemex, reform restrictive labor laws and restructure the tax system in order to strengthen the economy and tackle poverty.

“I am part of a new generation that grew up under democracy,” Peña Nieto told tens of thousands of cheering supporters at the Azteca soccer stadium on the city’s southern edge.

Sunday also saw thousands of anti-Peña Nieto protesters gathered in the heart of Mexico City to demonstrate against what they claimed would be a return to the past under the candidate, who leads all major polls in the race.

Today, electoral regulators preside over an elaborate system of safeguards that have made stealing the presidency at the ballot box impossible, political analysts say. But they warn that the country’s July 1 election remains vulnerable to subtler forms of tampering and the shadowy influences of organized crime, along with some new twists on the old dirty tricks.

Electoral fraud in Mexico “is a thing of the past,” said Leonardo Valdes, Mexico’s top election official, in an interview.